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A common complaint of law enforcement officers is that in the event of a hand-to-hand struggle with law breakers, it sometimes results in the officer""s belt becoming unbuckled with his pistol and other items on the belt falling out of reach, and the law breaker gaining the upper hand by retrieving the officer""s belt and weapons. This invention is an effective buckle protector added to the officer""s belt to prevent it from becoming accidentally unbuckled.
1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the art of police equipment; and more particularly, it relates to an individual waist belt carrying holsters and equipment and having protection against accidental unbuckling.
2. Description of the Related Art
A prior art solution to the unbuckling problem is to provide a central button on the buckle, which must be depressed before unbuckling is permitted. This solution is quite awkward and not easily workable even by the officer when he desires to unbuckle same. Furthermore, this solution is much more costly to implement. This invention alleviates the problems of the prior art in a simple, economical and effective manner.
The present invention is a protective device that guards against the inadvertent unbuckling of the waist belt from which are suspended one or more items that might serve as weapons to be used in disabling the wearer of the belt. This device is especially intended for use by civilian and military police officers. The belt has a front opening buckle of two pieces that fasten together, and a slidable sleeve or buckle cover that can be moved along the belt in a lengthwise direction to cover the buckle snugly and thereby prevent opening of the buckle until the cover is forcibly slid away from the buckle location. This device can be used with any type of buckle where thickness of the buckle portion is not greatly different from the thickness of the buckle portion is not greatly different from the thickness of belt at other locations. This locking arrangement is especially useful with belts where the buckle has a spring-loaded tongue that is insertable into a narrow opening and a wedge-shaped tip prevents withdrawal of the tongue until the tip is sprung aside allowing the tip to pass in the reverse direction through the opening.